


The Last Thing I Said

by RoryKurago



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, K-Day, Shorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-09-13
Packaged: 2018-02-10 09:31:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2019975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoryKurago/pseuds/RoryKurago
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a slew of last words. The world is ending. People are dying every day. But there’s always a handful that really stick with you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mako, Chuck, Herc and Newt

For Mako it’s her mother. There is screaming and running. Booming thunder of the world collapsing around them--distant and then suddenly right on top of them, and then they are running too, caught in the crowd like a tsunami.  
 _Mako! Hold my hand. Do NOT let go!_  
  
  
His mother smells like shampoo and fancy perfume and she’s dressed up prettier than usual when she leans over from the driver’s side to give him a kiss on the cheek. Big meeting with a new client for their design contract. Big enough that it’d give Dad breathing space after his discharge goes through. He screws up his face when she makes contact. (He’s too old for this but it’s tradition and if he doesn’t take it, she calls out disgustingly sloppy things loud enough that his mates waiting by the gate can hear as he gets out of the car, just to see him go red and stomp off in embarrassment.)  
 _I’ll pick you up after school._  
  
  
Scott’s not exactly in the best frame of mind the day he’s booted out of the Corps for good but Herc’s beyond caring. He just wants Scott the fuck away from Chuck, because he knew Scott has his faults - knew that those faults have been widening into fissures since the world starting waking up and everything was suddenly more admissible if you were Drift-compatible and quick with a fist - but Manila is _burned_ into his memory and he can’t even look at Scott right now, let alone acknowledge that they’re actually from the same blood. They came from the same place—walked out of the same hell. But where Herc dumped everything that might have weighed him down and ran, Scott had carried a bit of it out inside him.   
His brother was never an angel. Herc knew that. He’s a gambler, a cheat. Sometimes he’s a junkie—adrenaline, booze, narc, it really doesn’t matter when Scott’s craving that high. But this is a whole new level. And Herc’s ashamed to admit how completely blindsided he was.   
Christ, this is his brother, this is the man who was Best Man at Herc and Angela’s wedding, Herc’s co-pilot, Chuck’s godfather.  
But the Drift doesn’t lie. There’s a poison in Scott’s soul like there was in their father’s. Herc doesn’t want that shit anywhere near his son. Even if Scott is only ever the perfect uncle—would never hurt the boy, loves Chuck like his own. Even then. He’s toxic.   
Scott does not love. Scott is losing his soul in ways Herc thinks he should have seen the warning signs of a _long_ time ago.  
He learnt this in Manila. He learnt a lot in Manila. He learnt that the Drift does not lie but the human heart will block out what it doesn’t want to see so long and so well that there might as well be no Drift at all. He learnt that he really doesn’t know Scott at all—or that he does, and he’s really Drifting with Donovan Hansen and the kid Herc left town with on the run all those years ago is well and truly dead.  
Scott does not own the memory. Scott does not believe he is a monster.  
Herc knows he is. Just thinking about it makes his throat burn with bile and his stomach roil, and Scott is lucky he’s getting away with his life and a cracked nose because if Herc ever sees him again - if he ever comes anywhere near Chuck - Herc will kill him.  
Scott’s thrown his things into his sack and he’s two feet from slinking out the open door forever but he’s not going down without a fight.  
Herc plants both hands against his chest and _shoves_.  
 _Get the fuck out of this apartment. Get the fuck out of our lives. I can’t even fucking look at you, you lying, booze-soaked sack of shit. Do not come near my son again. You ever, _ever_ , show your face around here again, I will take you apart with my bare hands._  
Scott stumbles out the door cursing Herc’s name.  
The worst part, Herc thinks, is that the memory was buried in Scott’s head for years. And Herc should have known.  
  
  
Newt is on the phone with a friend at the SanFran U when he starts hearing screaming in the background noise, and then the rumble of falling masonry and emergency sirens. He’s asking what’s going on - because seriously, dude, it sounds like a fucking zombie apocalypse on your end - and the guy says,  
 _yeah, yeah, wait. Everyone’s running. They’re - hey, man, what the fuck’s going—hey! HEY! I’m talking to you— Holy shitstacks, Batman, what the hell is—_


	2. Raleigh, Stacker, Dana and Tamsin

  
Raleigh has nightmares where he forgets he’s Raleigh—forgets which Becket he is, and that he’s lived through this already, and for days on end he wakes up with the words on his tongue: Raleigh, listen to me, you have to—  
  
 _—hold on. It’ll be over soon._  
  
  
  
Stacker’s in a bar in Dallas-Forth Worth airport when the live news feed starts looking like a the late-night movies he used to sneak downstairs to watch. He’s forgotten his drink by the time his phone rings.  
Luna tells him she’s deploying, tells him she lied, tells him seventy years ago their hometown was being bombed by Nazis and a handful of mad Yanks had the bollocks to help. She tells him it’s time to return the favour.  
Stacker doesn’t disagree. But he also remembers the girl swinging a wooden sword. Blood dripping into tepid water in their bathroom sink, explosions like ink. The stink of iodine. And smoke: smoke in her hair for a week because she wouldn’t stay home when he went after those pikey fucks, sparks in her eyes as she stood beside him watching their shithole club burn to the ground. The crack in her voice when she said, _this must be what they felt like—all those villagers watching their homes burn in_ Dragonheart _._  
She never could keep her nose out of a fight.  
So he tells her that’s beautiful, but he knows she’s full of it, and she laughs. She laughs, and if he’d known that wouldn’t be the last time he’d hear it - if he’d known he’d spend the next three years reliving that sound, again and again and again in a white hot blur of smoke-scales-iodine and _has anyone tried ramming a Sidewinder down its throat?_ \- he would have told her to stay on the phone.  
He tells her to be careful. It looks like the Apocalypse. It looks like villages burning in _Dragonheart_.  
There’s a smirk in her voice: part him, part Tamsin, part of the girl that never could keep her nose out of a fight.

 _Not if I have anything to say about it._  
  
  
  
Dana takes Tahnee’s arm as she stands at the door shrugging into her oilcoat and tells her she doesn’t have to go alone. It’s just an errand, her twin replies—and she could use the time alone. Dana doesn’t want to push her just when things are starting to turn a corner. Instead she hands Tahnee her beanie and says maybe when Tahnee gets back they’ll finally talk to Marshal Braithwaite about a transfer. (Anywhere but Sydney. It crosses between them like electricity but neither is sure who had the thought first. Maybe both. Anywhere but near Lucky Seven.) The Beckets are up that way too—if Tahnee can stand losing a few extremities to frostbite, Dana adds.  
And Tahnee just smiles, soft and weary but genuine, and bumps her forehead against Dana’s.  
  
 _Yeah, Okay. I’ll only be gone a few hours—you better have that tea ready for me when I get back. It’s raining dogs._

  
  
Tamsin picks up Herc’s hand from the waffle-soft of her blanket the last time he visits her in hospital and tightens until bone scrapes. She’s worn down to the wire – barely there and fading fast – but her flaking fingernails draw blood, and all the fire that would have consumed Tokyo is funnelled through her eyes when she pulls him down to her level and issues her final order:  
  
 _Take care of Stacks._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LUNAAAAAA~ WHY?  
> Also: Tamsin. Thank you, very much. No, I wasn't planning on sleeping tonight. I _totally_ wanted to spend it with tissues rewatching of PacRim. You're a gem.

**Author's Note:**

> Not in chronological order, obviously.  
> Probably should've warned you to watch your step too: there's feels all over the place. I tried to keep them short, but there's a lot to say about Scott. Apparently.
> 
> More coming.


End file.
